Reanimatrix
by Evelyn Tremble
Summary: MatrixRe-Animator crossover. Dr. Herbert West seeks to comprehend the nature of life and death, but his dabblings in cell reanimation cause a slew of problems in the Matrix mainframe, which Agent Smith must investigate... Part 1 of many.


bReanimatrix/b  
  
a Matrix/Re-Animator crossover by Evelyn Tremble  
  
If you haven't seen the iRe-Animator/i movies, a cycle of deliciously crappy films starring the most excellent Jeffrey Combs, check them out! Or at the very least, read the original H.P. Lovecraft serial, "Herbert West, Re-Animator." They're worth it.  
  
Part 1/?  
  
bOne/b  
  
dd"Where?! I… Oh, ifuck/i!"  
  
dd"I request that you try to remain calm."  
  
dd"This isn't my—you, you! You're the fucker! You let them kill mearrmmiiii! You let—arrghghjkf—them kill me! You fucking pervaggggggg!"  
  
dd"If I did, in fact, let them kill you, then I defy you to explain how you are speaking to me right now."  
  
dd"Roddy came mrrfgwquu with the fucking chains, and his goons, and you—I'm dead, you—yurgrggggmmhhfff!!!"  
  
ddLimbs in various states of attachment flailed; vials and beakers went flying into a chaotic orchestration of shattered glass and splattered fluids.  
  
ddDr. Herbert West sighed, flicked his finger casually against the thick shaft of a hypodermic needle filled with a neon pink substance, and slid it with no great hurry into the boy's restrained arm, which was tethered to the boy's shoulder with only a few ligaments and veins. The boy engulfed the small concrete room with sustained incomprehensible screams for a few seconds more, foamy bile spurting from his blue lips, until he grew grey again and collapsed in a tangled heap of veins and sinews on the operating table.  
  
dd"The de-agent works, then," West yawned, and jotted a curt sentence expressing as much in his notebook.  
  
ddPlucking a soiled rag from the top of one of the many small tables set up in the cramped basement, West began to methodically scrub the walls and wipe the floor of his laboratory, the only place he could presently call home. Ever since he began studies at Miskatonic University back in Arkham, Massachusetts, he'd been hard-pressed to find a suitable living arrangement that would benefit his work; from his old roommate's house to the cemetery to an absurd prison cell, nowhere provided both easy access to subjects and guaranteed protection from dissenters—nay, ignorami—whose archaic and infantile understandings of the nature of life and death caused them to brand his work as insane.  
  
ddNone would bother him on this dark corner of Wabash, hidden in one of the boiler rooms of the former Heart O' the Hills Motel. Law officials came around occasionally, but seemed unconcerned entirely by his activities; one even spotted him in the midst of a late-night test subject excavation, tipped his hat, and carried on. He was… invisible to the authorities. Still believed killed in the prison uprising. As good as dead.  
  
ddOr even better than dead.  
  
ddWest dumped the remaining shards of glass in the trash and made a note to dispose of the de-animated corpse through the usual means in the morning. His routine of harvesting subjects from bar brawls and luring away drug addicts in the dank corners of clubs, mere ounces of heroin away from death, was extremely taxing, requiring a high degree of social finesse and youthfulness he, admittedly, lacked. While washing his hands in the basin, he squinted at the weary man in the grimy mirror: taut lines parenthizing his lips, tidy brown hair retreating further and further away from his forehead. His snub nose barely supported the thick glasses pressing upon it. He was… weary.  
  
ddYears spent on the run were, of course, taxing, but this weariness transcended the core of a hardened criminal he felt growing in his bones. Re-animation of the dead to return them to their living state had possessed him for nearly twenty years now, but in his relentless pursuit, he had grown increasingly disenchanted with the human race, the very people he was trying to save from the temporary circumstance of death. Too often he felt his subjects were better off staying dead, where they would be of no bother to anyone. When, in the entire course of his work, had he ever found someone truly worthy of re-animation?  
  
ddAnd there, sighed West with undue reserve, lay his greatest dilemma. His solutions were tweaked and refined such that, though still imperfect, he held the ability to return life and once again take it away. Incredible power, to be certain, and it was safer in his hands than in any other fool's, but a power that could scarcely benefit him in such a weak and oblivious world. After a quick check to ensure the corpse was still restrained, he turned out the light and exited, sliding the deadbolt into place.  
  
dd"Freeze where you are! Put your hands in the air."  
  
ddWest did so as a single harsh column of light swept across his face through the otherwise pitch-black chamber he called home. iDamn it./i His watch slid down his arm, reminding him a little too closely of the handcuffs he had worn not long ago and now may wear again.  
  
dd"What is your name?" the same officer barked, the one holding the flashlight. He then turned to a colleague. "Check his telephone."  
  
dd"I don't have a telephone," West said. He kept his voice flat and chilly, but his pulse was accelerating as the endorphins in his brain began to churn. He had never been skilled at making escapes, but he had to prepare himself nonetheless. Never could he go back to the horrid researching conditions of prison, or the ridicule of the court room, charged and convicted for crimes the lawyers, judges, and juries did not even comprehend.  
  
ddThe light bobbled as the cop slowly approached him. "Look for a telephone. And computer! Pat him down; he may have the files on him."  
  
dd"I'm sorry to disappoint you, but you may find my living conditions to be too primitive for what you're seeking. No telephone, no computer. How can I be of assistance, officer?" Voice still steady, he slipped one hand behind his back while speaking and unlocked the deadbolt on the laboratory door.  
  
dd"I said to keep your hands above your head! What is your name?"  
  
ddWest spat out the first name that came to mind. "Carl Hill."  
  
dd"He's lying," the second officer hissed.  
  
dd"Don't lie to me. Are you Herbert West?"  
  
dd"I can't find any computers, sir!"  
  
ddAs the first officer spun to yell at the second, pudgier one, West took the opportunity to send a rolling tray colliding into them both, causing little damage but giving him the element of surprise. The two men rushed at him, tripping over the cart as it spun around before them, and he closed himself back inside the lab. Once inside he began throwing bookshelves, carts, and all manner of heavy equipment into a pile before the door. He grabbed a bone-cutter and began sawing away at the crumbling mortar of one of the side walls.  
  
ddThrough the din of the chiseling, shards of cement prickling at his face, West could hear them pounding at the door and futilely firing rounds into its rusty metal exterior. But another sound was growing, low enough at first that West thought it was coming from him, but growing in pitch from a corner of the ill-lit room: a growling, frenzied sound like a man's last gasp suspended in eternity. West turned his head from the wall, staring in dismay at the stretcher near the door.  
  
ddThe de-agent was wearing off.  
  
ddAn electrical zap emitted from the door, and it swung open—opening away, West realized with enraged self-defeat, from his reinforcing pile. The officers appeared to have multiplied, as there were now no less than five of them swarming over the mound of trays and apparatuses. Once inside the laboratory, they drew their weapons, but upon hearing the muffled howls and seeing the writhing of the corpse on the stretcher, they looked from the corpse back to West wielding his still-whirring bone cutter, and became uncertain at whom to aim.  
  
dd"Leave here now," West uttered, droplets of blood forming on his cheeks where the fragments of mortar had struck him. "You can't possibly comprehend the forces of life and death with which you are dealing."  
  
dd"I was, in fact, hoping that you could ienlighten/i me," announced a new voice, matching West's own in smoothness and chill. The patrolmen stood at attention, and West switched the bone cutter off. Only the gargling of the corpse on the stretcher permeated the air—and even that lessened.  
  
ddWest looked up at the man: impeccably groomed, in a neatly pressed suit with shoes perfectly shined and not a single wisp of hair out of place. His eyes were obscured by sunglasses, but West could feel their glare, prickling at the hair on his arms. Nearly all men perturbed West, but few filled him with such immediate revile. With no suitably snappy response to the man's inquiry, however, West kept silent.  
  
ddThe man circled the remaining upright worktables in the laboratory, his hand grazing across the surfaces of each, fingertips tracing the flasks and jumper cables and syringes. He approached the twitching cadaver, and stopped. Not a startled stop, merely a bemused one.  
  
dd"Will you kindly explain this mess to me?"  
  
ddWest struggled with himself for a moment, then stormed with purpose towards the man. "You're the one hunting me down for it. Shouldn't you already know?"  
  
dd"I know the problems it is causing; I do not yet know what it is." His every word was too perfectly formed, too cuttingly delivered, and West despised it.  
  
dd"My ilife's work/i," he quivered, "the process of re-animating dead tissue, returning it to life—"  
  
ddThe man nodded his head just minutely enough to cut him off, and raised one hand in preparation to gesture to his men. West scowled. The corpse howled and lunged for the man, succeeding in tearing off one of its restrained arms completely, giving it much better range of access, which it used to the fullest by planting its mossy teeth firmly into the man's neck.  
  
ddWest was already reaching for the de-agent, mind leaping through calculations trying to find where he had underestimated the dosage of de-agent needed for permanent cell death, when a most peculiar and unexpected thing occurred as the corpse tore away a chunk of flesh from the man: the flesh and, in fact, the man himself melted and evaporated entirely.  
  
The row of patrolmen collectively took a step back.  
  
West sprung into action, filling a syringe with the pink de-agent and jamming it into the small of the corpse's neck. It screamed more agonizingly than before, clawing at West and spewing blood and bile all over the room, but its torrent diminished to twitching, which evened out into stillness.  
  
When West turned away, one of the patrolmen was gone, and the man—completely unharmed—was stepping towards him again.  
  
"That demonstration will be quite sufficient for now." He gestured again, and West—still stunned by the man's spectacular departure, let alone his abrupt return—barely noticed the patrolmen wrestling him to the laboratory floor, tearing open his lab coat and his crisp white shirt. The man produced a slimy, writhing—thing—from his sleeve and dangled it above West's abdomen. "I hope your research will be of greater assistance in the future."  
  
ddAnd suddenly, the creature burrowed—iburrowed/i—into his stomach, passing seamlessly through his dermis, writhing within his intestines, with unbearable pain he could only impotently attempt to express through horrified screams that travelled deep into the basement's bowels… 


End file.
